Changelog
This entry details all the changes made for Telehack as listed in changelog. # This file is in reverse chronological order. # Newest entries are at the top. Added the following language extensions to BASIC for better HP2000 Access BASIC compatibility: READ #n,r;var - reads from file #n optional record r and inputs vars PRINT #n,r;var - prints variable list to file #n optional record r Added the following functions to BASIC for better HP2000 Access BASIC comptability: LIN(number) POS(string1,string2) TYP(filenum) ITM(filenum) SPA(number) REC(filenum) BRK(arg) NUM(char) TIM(n) SYS(n) CTL(n) UPS$(string) Added synonyms for HP2000 Access BASIC comptability SCR, SCRATCH - synonym for NEW Added ARPS.EXE, and a badge. The /TIME option has been added to the SYSTAT (or FINGER, W, etc.) command. If a user manually sets a time zone, then the time is based on the manually-set time zone. Otherwise, the time is based on the time zone corresponding to the geographic location of the user. If the geographic location of the user cannot be determined, then the time will be blank. pppd.exe now prompts whether to publish your BBS in bbslist.txt. Many timestamps are now tailored to your time zone. Your time zone is determined from your IP address by default. Use the SET TZ command to manually set your time zone. Use the SHOW TZ command to show your time zone. Type HELP SET TZ for a list of valid time zones. The GEOIP command now displays more information, including subdivision(s) and time zone, and accepts IPv6 addresses. As an alternative to the SET PLAN command, you can now edit your .plan using the ped text editor. Type "PED .plan" and press Control-D to save and exit. The shell now allows jumping between words using the Meta key. Press Meta-F to jump to the beginning of a word or Meta-B to jump to the end of a word. The Meta key may be labeled as "Alt" or "Option" on your keyboard. You may have to configure your terminal emulator to "Use Option as Meta key". BASIC now supports type checking with operators. For example, 1 + 2 will add the numbers 1 and 2, "A" + "B" will concatenate the strings "A" and "B", and 1 + "A" will throw a type mismatch error. Added the /y command to relay for yawning. Removed doot and tood shell commands to check the balance, since we've voted not to have fun here anymore. In BASIC, STR has been replaced with STR$. The function STR$ returns a string. Added "score " command to see high scores for (most) games, for example "score 2048". Added manual reloading to Telefrag, press 'v' to reload. Added Strafing to Telefrag, use 'x' and 'c' to strafe left and right Added Telefrag the hottest new Telnet based deathmatch First Person Shooter. Run the 'telefrag' command to join! Arrow keys to turn / move, space to shoot. Telehack's file system is no longer random! The files you see on a host are now the same files everyone else sees! However, executible files are excluded from this and are still random between users. You can now upload files to telehack via our ftp server. Simply use your text based ftp client (modern gui based ones probably wont work) and connect to telehack on the standard ftp port. Next, login to your telehack account and switch to passive mode. Then you're free to upload and download files! Added the "hexd" hexadecimal file editor. Use it to write your CHIP-8 and A2 games! Added a CHIP-8 interpreter to Telehack, use the "c8" command to run any ".c8" files in your current directory. You can now delete files via external FTP. The POKE command will no longer cause TeleBASIC to exit into SYSMON. Portblock.exe has been revamped! To activate portblock, first run it on the host you which to block as usual, then write down the phone number of that host. Next, login to any BBS that you have Sysop on and run 'PBLOCK '. This will instruct the BBS server to connect to the portblock.exe daemon. Portblock.exe will only stop porthack if a BBS is connected. Portblock can still be bypassed by acccount kit exploits. Portblock can be remotely terminated by either killproc.exe or by hacking the connected BBS and running 'PBLOCK ' with a different phone number. Reverted INKEY$ to its previous, blocking functionality. Use POLKEY$ for a non-blocking input solution. You can now run 'comm.exe ' to directly connect to a desired com port, instead of getting the first available one. Added the INSTR( "ABCDEFG", "D", START_POS ) 4 to TeleBASIC, to search for a substring in a string. Added the ATDS command to comm.exe, this command will automatically dial your own phone number. Added the DIR$ function to TeleBASIC, this function will return a list of all files in a user's home directory seperated by a space. TeleBASIC's INKEY$ function, is no longer blocking. If INKEY$ is called and a key is not pressed within 1 second, an empty string is returned instead. The modem daemon and comm.exe have been updated. Users now have access to four seperate dial-up modems, that can be accessed through TeleBASIC or comm.exe. The phone number for these modems is different then your PPPD phone number, and can be viewed by running comm.exe. A sliding tile puzzle game has been added. Type 2048 to play. A change to TeleBASIC was made that requires you to yield periodically in your programs. Simply call SLEEP, INKEY$, or INPUT within your loops to avoid crashes. A list of BBSes being operated by pppd.exe is now available in bbslist.txt on the main Telehack node. Telehack now supports two factor authentication and password resets through e-mail. Type SET EMAIL to set the e-mail address to send verification codes to. Type SET 2FA to turn two factor authentication on or off. Also see SHOW EMAIL and SHOW 2FA. The process system has been reworked. Background processes now use 100-300K and the total amount of memory for each user has decreased. The amount of memory available to each user is equivalent to: 1024K + ( 16K * Your Level ) Memory management is now important, consider which programs you run carefully! unlink.exe now terminates links to your other active terminals in addition to the one you run it in. Added a line to relay when entering stating the amount of time since a message was posted. satlink.exe can now connect to satellites without root. However, root is required to alter the orientation of the satellite. Removed PEEK(531) from BASIC, use INKEY$ instead. Removed long distance comm FTP transfers. Use iptun.exe instead for this. Updated the random number generation in BASIC. Added the TIMER token which returns the number of seconds since midnight. Try RANDOMIZE TIMER to get a unique seed. Completing a Quest and having the SYSADM badge will hide your terminal in the SYSMON until you disconnect from Telehack. Syslogd can now be muted with 'log /mute' and 'log /unmute' Additional protection against brute-force attacks on user accounts has been added. (Telehack user accounts, NOT historical users) Added an external FTP server to telehack.com on port 21. This server does NOT support directories and conforms to the FTP standard as detailed in RFC-959. As such, this FTP server will likely be incompatible with modern FTP clients. It is highly recommended that you use a command line FTP client. This server only supports Passive FTP transfers, not Active. Added 'summon /cancel ' to stop summoning a user and automatically stop summoning when you logout. satlink.exe and xmburst.exe have been added enabling users to connect and manipulate satellites. Make your own links between hosts! A copy of satcom.man has been included in your local directory. See that for help getting started! An Apple ][ emulator has been added. Use it with the 'run' command to execute Apple ][ programs. They can be found on hosts with the .a2 extension. Added the ability to check a user's finger page via HTTP. Go to http://telehack.com/u/username to view that user's profile Added the 'summon' command. If a user has been AFK > 1h, the summon command will ping that user every 5m with their terminal bell until they press a key. Overhauled the 'link' command. Multiple users can now be linked to the same user. Added 'defgroup' to the 'set' command. Users in the 'defgroup' list will automatically be given root access to a system after you run rootkit.exe on it. A quote system has been added to relay NOTE: only Opers can modify the quote list Non ".exe" files can now be transferred over FTP and XMODEM pppd.exe has been added by Devon Use it to run ".bas" files on other users accounts comm.exe has been overhauled by QuantX, and can now be used to dial other TH users. NOTE: comm.exe can only dial numbers in the 611 prefix anomaly created quiz.exe to take your brain for a spin Added the following commands to Unix hosts: adduser - add an account to the system deluser - remove an account from the system addgroup - give a user root permissions on the system delgroup - remove a user's root permissions from the system Added RTFM because new users clearly need to start reading telehack.txt. Changed the BRUTE badge to LETMEIN The BRUTE badge is now something else. The QR command has been added to generate QR codes. MAIL /block and SEND /block have been migrated to SET BLOCK and SHOW BLOCK. See HELP SET BLOCK for more information. The 'dial /redial' command has been added enabling you to quickly redial the last phone number you dialed SATAN.EXE now supports BBS operating systems BBS hosts no longer allows logins as a user automatically REMPS.EXE now allows a greater hop distance. User Quantx has patched soviet.bas The BF command has been added to execute Brainf*ck code. The web interface has been updated. The SHOW COLORS command has been added to show a table of ANSI colors. Graphics renditions can be selected with the following options: /bold, /faint, /italic, /underline, /blink, /blinkrapid, /inverse, /conceal, /crossedout The ped text editor has been integrated. Start it with the PED command and enter an optional filename as the argument. VT files now accept a /delay= option. AN NMAP COMMAND WAS ADDED, A ROUGH CLONE OF THE REAL NMAP! prestonc added ftp host tunneling with comm.exe, what a relief. ZCHEAT.EXE has been added. The LOCK command has been added to lock your terminal. More lines have been added to PTYCON. ANTI.EXE from Egroj has been added. AUTOLOGIN.EXE has been added to send login credentials automatically. User Quantx has written TRANSCEND.BAS. It is available on host ODDJOB. COMM.EXE, an interactive modem with AT commands + 2 badges to go along with it. /S relay command has been added to sip easier than before. SYSLOGD notifications are now susceptible to data corruption. The MAC command has been added to look up the vendor of a MAC address. The HOME statement has been added to BASIC. HOSTS /STATS has been added to show host statistics. The CLS statement has been added to BASIC. "PRESTONC MADE THE OPERATOR!! GO MESSAGE HIM RIGHT NOW!!!" The SET NICK command has been added. If another user mentions your username while you are in relay, a bell will be sent to your terminal. Use SET NICK to set additional nicknames that trigger a bell. The TTY and WRITE commands have been added on Unix hosts. A bug with the URL shortener in relay has been fixed. Autocomplete (tab completion) has been improved. The SUDO command has been added on Unix hosts. FINGER can now be used with NPC and other users on Unix hosts. For example: FINGER ABBAJAY@ORACLE Environment variables such as $HOST and $USER have been added on Unix hosts. The UPTIME command has been added on Unix hosts. Telehack user HM has written MASTERMIND.BAS. It is available in the main directory. The ROLL command has been added to roll animated dice. An RFC command has been added to read Internet Request for Comment (RFC) documents. Type RFC for an index or RFC for a particular RFC. The ECHO command has been added. Options: /lc, /uc, /title, /inverse, /reverse The SORT pipe has been added to sort paginated output by a certain column. The WC pipe now supports -c (characters), -m (max length), and -w (words). Control-L now clears the screen as the CLEAR command does. If the name of an existing command is used as an alias, prefixing it with a slash will ignore the alias and execute the original command. The CLOCK command has been added to show the time in FIGlet. An alternate font can be specified with CLOCK . Type FIGLET to list the available fonts. PING and TRACEROUTE are now logged to SYSLOG. The PIG command has been added to convert text to Pig Latin. BASIC should now be more responsive to control-C interrupts. SET FGCOLOR and SET BGCOLOR have been added. They also now will persist across screen mode resets. The color DEFAULT has been added to reset the color to the terminal default. STTY RESET will reset terminal attributes. New alias commands: SET ALIAS command and SHOW ALIAS alias Example: SET ALIAS J JOKE FOO (This makes J and JOKE FOO equivalent) RELAY /who now shows the number of users in the header. New finger search: FINGER @*, FINGER user@* JOKE now takes an optional search argument to search for jokes containing a word or phrase. e.g., "joke pizza" will show a random joke containing the word 'pizza'. The FORWARD command has been added to mail. NPC users on hosts can now be fingered. New WEATHER command will show you weather information for your location or for another telehack user. (Strictly speaking, SHOW WEATHER). Telehack user anomaly has written egg.bas, located on host oracle. New alias wx for w /weather. Use /wx in relay. Also added /whox in relay. Added a /weather option to finger/w. You can also use /wx as a shorthand. The units will default to C or F depending on your location. You can override the default with SET TEMP Added a privacy policy for telehack in the PRIVACY command or privacy.txt. Users are required to be at least 13 years of age unless they have parental consent to have an account on Telehack. New options added to USERS: USERS /level and USERS /badge= A system logging daemon has been added. It is required to receive certain types of notifications, including netlog messages. New command SCORE /badges shows a count of how many users have attained each badge. The TRON/TROFF commands have been added to BASIC. Any asymmetries in the netstat map should now be corrected. Some hosts that were not connected to any other hosts should now be part of the uumap again. There is now a regex golf program for learning about and practicing regular expressions (regex). Files on hosts seen under guest logins are now the same as the files seen under a regular user login. The bug preventing the MITNICK badge from being awarded has been fixed. 'stty reset' will reset the terminal mode back to defaults. remps has been moved from a command into an exe. remps.exe is limited to NETSTAT hosts. Added pager pipe options grep -c and wc -l e.g. hosts | wc -l hosts | grep -c 'foo' Added options to USERS: /root /sysop /login /first Up and down arrow keys now work in the pager. octopus will now display arrow key escape sequences. The pager will no longer truncate lines longer than the width of the display. The baud rate is now restored after exiting a bbs. Added commands primes and rig. New emote command /mes added to relay. Command-line editing is now supported in readline. ^A=beginning of line ^E=end of line ^F=forward ^B=backward ^D=delete char. Added new commands rot13, morse and zipcode. ching is back. The old 'usenet' command is back on the unix hosts. Usenet can still be accessed through 'notes' on telehack main. Basic now supports 'GO TO', 'NEXT J,I', and dimensional arrays. show logins / show roots / show sysops have been updated to display hosts in the netstat format rather then the comma-separate list. There was a bug in BASIC which ran int() on any exponentiation with ^ or **. This prevented LEM.BAS from working correctly. It has been fixed so floating point numbers can now be used with ^ and **. Netstat now indicates systems that you have root on with a !. The bug where duplicate processes could be started on hosts has been fixed. cal now shows three months. The bug in lem.bas has been fixed thanks to jrandom: jrandom: lem has a bug. line 755: .0056 should be .00526 jrandom: its also present on vintage-basic jrandom: its (apparently) a typo when entered from 101 Basic Computer Games jrandom: I compared it with a scan on 101 Basic Computer Games jrandom: Its rockt2 if I remember right jrandom: doing some more research, and it seems the 1978 version (original printing) has it too jrandom: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf ^Z (control-Z) will now background relay, just as /bg does. inbound telnet now enabled on port 23..443..1337..8080..31173. ? /i - show invisible commands help /i - show invisible commands uuplot without an argument will now show a local map of porthacked hosts. uuplot now also shows more hosts than before. New SHOW & SET commands available. Type SET ? or SHOW ? for a list of options. "SET plan" allows you to add a message to your finger output. uupath now shows multiple routes to a host. Optionally, hosts to avoid may be specified, e.g. uupath sun sgi would show paths to sun that avoid host sgi. uuplot now indicates porthacked systems with a *. Added a way to do "long-distance" ftp. The killproc tool now accepts an hostname as argument. New badges. The 'run' command is back for user convenience. CP/M now supports FOOBAR~n.EXE naming style for XMODEM arguments, as shown in DIR. Added send /(un)block All roots and processes have been cleared, and .exe files have been redistributed among the hosts. There are three new badges. Added the ftp command, you now need to upload your binaries to remote host before being able to run them. Added XMODEM to download files from BBS. Removed the static core. Re-run delays removed. Added support for background processes on the telehack node. Fixed a bug in commands argument parsing. Fixed a bug in the basic interpreter which caused hangs in the simulation. Added a log of previous SEND messages: send /log show log of previous sends send /log /clear permanently delete the send log Fixed a bug in the mail command when sending multiple e-mails in the same 'mail' run. Fixed bug where you couldn't say "send " or "finger " in relay. Added new banners for well and netcom. Fixed banner display problem. Added 'units', a units conversion program. Added w /direct, to show which users are connected via direct telnet on port 23 vs. using the web interface. Removed the captcha on the newuser command so that users who rely on screen-readers to access Telehack can still register accounts. Added 'save' option to archive mail, vs. d or delete. mail /save will recall old saved mail. Hit s to save a message in mail. Wrapping of long lines has been fixed; previously the end of line was truncated, now it will properly wrap. Removed the stampatello font for captchas, too hard to read. Improvements to basic: Fixed inkey$, input$, and peek 531. Added GET, which checks the keyboard for activity. Pasting text will no longer disconnect the user in basic sessions. PEEK now views live memory, not a static copy loaded when basic was started. Telehack now has an electronic mail system. Email delivery is limited to telehack accounts. You can now add the host as an argument to porthack to bypass the "Continue" and host prompts (e.g. "run porthacK oddjob"). New control-R quick relay feature: If relay is backgrounded (with /bg), ^R will pop into relay from anywhere and allow one line of relay entry. Fixed the bug with a host showing up in the rootlist more than once. It's now possible to get KILROY again. Badge descriptions are back. Added ching (I Ching, or the Book of Changes). Added figlet. Fixed figlet kerning. Added eliza. Added ability to get SYSOP status on the bbs systems. Added DIAL /log, to show the connection history for dial and wardial. ptycon line 27 has been fixed. The bug with ostype HP-UX should be fixed. Added cal. Also the factor command, to print prime factors of a number. Hackgame update: - You can run rootkit on any host that doesn't already have a rootkit running. This will make you root there. - Rootkit requires an os-dependent support process to start; run it to find out which one you need. You'll find the support programs scattered around bbs systems. Use the file area to download the file to your static core, or try to RUN it from the CP/M shell to load it. - Root users can kill any process on a host, including user shell processes. - There are 2 new programs which can kill a process: pdebug and killproc. You can use these to take root away from someone. - killproc only works on netstat-adjacent hosts, and requires root to run. - pdebug works on processes on the same host. - A rootkit proces can't be killed until all of the other user's processes have been killed (except shells). So running more processes on a host helps protect your rootkit from being killed. - There is a netlog program which will broadcast syslog events to you, wherever you are in telehack. This can give you advance warning that someone is trying to log onto one of your hosts or mess with your processes. Added the Steve Jackson Games BBS, Illuminati Online. Also the fnord command. Finger from outside (remote finger) has been fixed. You can now finger @telehack.com and finger @@telehack.com again. Added the classic educational game Oregon Trail, available as oregon.bas. New hackgame progs include pdebug and killproc - which allow local and remote process killing, respectively. User shells may also be killed now. Added phoon - shows the current phase of the moon, or the phase of the moon on any given date. Added cowsay. Added a CP/M shell to BBS systems. Added background support to RELAY. From inside of relay, type /bg to background relay but remain in chat. From the shell, use RELAY and RELAY /command to issue relay chat lines & commands. The bug in the BASIC interpreter affecting the variables a, s, c, l, and e has been fixed. A crude TAB() function has been added. The hackgame is kind of in transition. Some of the old stuff is gone, but the new stuff is only partly finished, and I don't know if I'll keep it. Please pardon the dust during the eternal construction. Added root-only command reboot, to reboot a host. Rebooting terminates every user session on the host. Added root-only command wall, to message everyone logged into a host. Added UUPLOT command to make an ascii graph of routes to a host. DIAL and wardial no longer add hosts to netstat. The netstat map is fixed, based on the old uucp maps. Added Joshua to the WOPR. Some ancient ascii animations are scattered through the filesystem as .exe's. Fixed CALL so direct entry points may be invoked without going through the system monitor. Some more hosts have been found and added into the map, including a number from MIT. uumap command added. QUEST now lets you choose a new quest. If you get frustrated working on a quest, wait a while and type quest again. You will be given the option to choose a new quest. Added a command to force dumb-terminal mode on all zrun games: stty /dumb I added this to make it easier for non-sighted users to use telehack. use stty /ansi to turn the default ANSI mode back on. Added 'talk' program - interactive user-user chat Added 'octopus' program - translates keystrokes into oct/dec/hex/ascii /finger now works in relay. Fixed a crash in the pager if your column width was set to 0 somehow. Added a kill command so you can kill your own logins. SEND followed by return will go into send mode, so you don't have to retype the send command over and over to have a private conversation with someone. Put a cap on the number of programs that can be in static core (LIST). The initial cap is 5. Added LOAD and UNLOAD commands to manage the process LIST. The captcha is a bit faster now and should not come up as much. Added uupath and traceroute to all network hosts. /log in relay now omits the enter and exit messages. Use /logfull to see the raw log including enters & exits. Added this changelog. ---- Go back to main page Category:Important